Browsing by Subject "Unternehmertum"

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Corporate entrepreneurship in the public sector : exploring the peculiarities of public enterprises
(2021) Tremml, Timo; Ebersberger, Bernd
Entrepreneurship is predominantly treated as a private-sector phenomenon and consequently its increasing importance in the public sector goes largely unremarked. That impedes the research field of entrepreneurship being capable of spanning multiple sectors. Accordingly, recent research calls for the study of corporate entrepreneurship (CE) as it manifests in the public sector where it can be labeled public entrepreneurship (PE). This dissertation considers government an essential entrepreneurial actor and is led by the central research question: What are the peculiarities of the public sector and how do they impact public enterprises’ entrepreneurial orientation (EO)? Accordingly, this dissertation includes three studies focusing on public enterprises. Two of the studies set the scope of this thesis by investigating a specific type of organization in a specific context—German majority-government-owned energy suppliers. These enterprises operate in a liberalized market experiencing environmental uncertainties like competitiveness and business transformation. The aims and results of the studies included in this dissertation can be summarized as follows: The systematic literature review illuminates the stimuli of and barriers to entrepreneurial activities in public enterprises and the potential outcomes of such activities discussed so far. The review reveals that research on EO has tended to focus on the private sector and consequently that barriers to and outcomes of entrepreneurial activities in the public sector remain under-researched. Building on these findings, the qualitative study focuses on the interrelated barriers affecting entrepreneurship in public enterprises and the outcomes of entrepreneurial activities being inhibited. The study adopts an explorative comparative causal mapping approach to address the above-mentioned research goal and the lack of clarity around how barriers identified in the public sphere are interrelated. Furthermore, the study bases its investigation on the different business segments of sales (competitive market) and the distribution grid (natural monopoly) to account for recent calls for fine-grained research on PE. Results were compared with prior findings in the public and private sector. That comparison indicates that the barriers revealed align with aspects discussed in prior research findings relating to both sectors. Examples include barriers associated with the external environment such as legal constraints and barriers originating from within the organization such as employee behavior linked to a value system that hampers entrepreneurial action. However, the most important finding is that a public enterprise’s supervisory board can hinder its progress, a finding running counter to those of previous private-sector research and one that underscores the widespread prejudice that the involvement of a public shareholder and its nominated board of directors has a negative effect on EO. The third study is quantitative (data collection via a questionnaire) and builds on both its predecessors to examine the little understood topic of board behavior and public enterprises’ social orientation as predictors of EO. The study’s results indicate that social orientation represses EO, whereas board strategy control (BSC) does not seem to predict EO. Regarding BSC, we find that the local government owners in our sample are less involved in BSC. The third study also examines board networking and finds its relationship with EO depends on the ownership structure of the public-sector organization. An important finding is that minority shareholders, such as majority privately-owned enterprises and hub firms, repress EO when engaging in board networking. In summary, this doctoral thesis contributes to the under-researched topic of CE in the public sector. It investigates the peculiarities of this sector by focusing on the supervisory board and social oriented activities and their impact on the enterprise’s EO in the quantitative study. The thesis addresses institutional questions regarding ownership and the last study in particular contributes to expanding resource dependence theory, and invites a nuanced perspective: The original perspective suggests that interorganizational arrangements like interfirm network ties and equity holdings reduce external resource dependency and consequently improve firm performance. The findings within this thesis expose resource delivery to potential contrary effects to extend the understanding of interorganizational action with important implications for practice.
Sustainable entrepreneurship and the bioeconomy transition
(2023) Hinderer, Sebastian; Kuckertz, Andreas
Transgressing planetary boundaries endangers the safe operating space for humanity. Thus, a transition of socioeconomic systems toward sustainable development is needed. Prior research elevated the role of sustainable entrepreneurship (SE) in the transition process toward sustainable development in general and the bioeconomy in specific. Bioeconomy strategies worldwide acknowledge the importance of entrepreneurship for the transition process. There is consensus in research that entrepreneurs are needed to implement the vision of a bioeconomy as defined in these strategies. However, it remains unclear how opportunities for entrepreneurial activity in the bioeconomy come into existence and how entrepreneurs contribute to the bioeconomy transition by acting on the provided opportunities. Thus, this dissertation aims to shed light on the interface of SE and the bioeconomy, specifically by investigating the interplay between SE and the bioeconomy transition in light of planetary boundaries and the role of entrepreneurs within the transition. The four empirical studies included in this dissertation take different perspectives on the interface of SE and the bioeconomy and thus contribute different insights to the overall picture drawn in this dissertation. For instance, Study 1 examines a transition pathway to a sustainable bioeconomy by involving an international expert sample in a Delphi survey and subsequent cross-impact analysis. Study 1 presents a list of events necessary to achieve the transition ranked by the experts to reflect their urgency. The cross-impact analysis facilitates combining the most urgent events to create an integrated model of the transition to a sustainable bioeconomy. The findings suggest that rather than bioeconomy strategies, technological progress leveraged by innovative bioeconomy startups and investments currently constitute the main bottleneck hindering a transition to a bioeconomy. Study 2 zooms into the level of new bioeconomy ventures. Based on interviews with ten bioeconomy entrepreneurs from six European countries, it investigates how entrepreneurial opportunities emerge in the bioeconomy context and what competencies entrepreneurs need to act on them. Conceptualizing the bioeconomy transition as an external enabler for SE, Study 2 opens new avenues for research on sustainable development and innovation policy. Furthermore, Study 2 shows that new venture creation in the bioeconomy requires unique knowledge and specific competencies. Study 3 asks how to scale sustainable new ventures and puts it in the context of the ongoing de-growth debate. In recent years the de-growth paradigm has gained popularity in the sustainability discourse. Questioning the absolute decoupling of economic growth from environmental degradation, de-growth proponents suggest downscaling production and consumption to reduce resource extraction and energy consumption. Applying latent class analysis to reveal de-growth attitudes among 393 surveyed entrepreneurs and subsequent regression analysis, Study 3 answers how de-growth attitudes among (sustainable) entrepreneurs are associated with their decision-making on scaling strategies for their ventures. Furthermore, it shows that the development level of the economy an entrepreneur is active in is an essential factor in the decision-making on scaling strategies. Study 4 investigates how sustainable new ventures gain legitimacy to acquire the necessary resources to grow. Previous research suggested being distinctive yet understandable as key to legitimacy for new ventures. However, Study 4 describes complex entrepreneurial identities, i.e., unconventional combinations of entrepreneurial identity claims from the founder and venture levels, as an additional source of legitimacy that benefits only sustainable new ventures but not conventional ones. Since sustainable startups aim to tackle complex problems, external audiences expect them to be different from established conventions of the status quo. An analysis of 15,116 crowdfunding campaigns and their creators’ user profiles via topic modeling and subsequent regression analysis supports this argumentation. The findings show that sustainable ventures with complex – or even odd – entrepreneurial identities receive more support from crowdfunders, while conventional ventures do not. Overall, this dissertation conceptualizes a bi-directional and potentially reinforcing relationship between SE and the bioeconomy transition by building on extant literature and collecting and analyzing new data in four empirical studies. Moreover, it highlights the role of entrepreneurs who need unique knowledge and specific competencies and differ significantly from conventional entrepreneurs in their behavior and entrepreneurial identity. Finally, this dissertation discusses how policy and societal norms can foster productive entrepreneurship that is innovative and sustainable within planetary boundaries.